Imperial Roots

The mighty British beer exporters of the 18th century are famous for “inventing” the global India pale ale. Truth be known, porter was also shipped to the tropics. These visions of ships boldly navigating treacherous maritime conditions to exotic ports over several months with cargo eagerly anticipated by thirsty legions of expatriates craving casks of perfectly matured ale are romantic indeed. Many of those brewers also shipped their wares closer to home, with one coveted market to the east in Scandinavia, Russia and Eastern Europe. People of these cool regions preferred the darker, sweeter beers of London and Burton to the dry and hoppy IPA, favored in the subcontinent. Strong renditions of porter and stout were a natural for these northern markets. The relatively short, tempered trip left the product much like that which left port in England. The cold waters provided optimal conditions below deck, a smoothing, lagering period of sorts. And, unlike India, the climate afforded relatively long storage times once delivered. Bottom-fermentation and cold-conditioning were the norm here, influenced by brewing pioneers in Bohemia, Austria, Germany and Denmark. Logically, these imported beers were eventually made locally, which in turn changed the style from London/Burton beer to lager-inspired Baltic porter. Naturally, local hops and malt were used, defining the Baltic style, and further separating it from its English ancestors.

Founder and owner Richard Keene emerges from the barn to greet me. “Cold isn’t it?” I say, feeling the brisk eastern wind on my face. “All the better for the beer,” he replies as I follow him, his comment the first clue that this is not a regular real ale brewery. Inside the barn ancient wooden beams and bare red brick walls impose an air of antiquity, but the sight of a row of space-age stainless steel vessels is very much of the here and now.

At one end, standing on a shoulder high platform, sits a brace of what Keene calls the “cooking vessels,” the place where the beer is mashed and boiled before being pumped to gleaming conical fermenters that look like the sort of vessel James Cameron might send to the bottom of the ocean in search of the Titanic. The interior of the barn is perishing cold, suiting Keene and the beers he makes. They, contrary to what is expected from a rural microbrewery, are not the regular array of bitter, mild, golden ale and porter that 98 percent of British craft breweries major in. We might be in England, the home of real ale, but Cotswold is taking a different path. Think Bohemia, think Bavaria. Think English craft lager. Well-matured, bottom-fermented, cold-stored lager. Welcome to the revolution.

Keene grabs a tall, stemmed glass and walks over to one of the tanks. The word “Premium” and the date “3/2/10” are chalked onto a small blackboard (it was brewed four weeks before). He turns a tap and a light golden stream of beer arcs into the glass, rapidly being topped with a meringue-white collar of foam. The nose has a light, snappy, herbal note reminiscent of bitter lemon soda; in the mouth it is refreshing, crisp and retains more of that bitter lemon note without being tart; the finish is dry and bittersweet with some cracker-like graininess lingering. A refreshing, clean-tasting lager of the sort I have often enjoyed in Bohemia. “Time is of the essence,” says Keene. “This will have had three to four days fermentation and then four weeks maturation. Any shorter and it wouldn’t seem so mellow.” As if to prove a point we try a glass of the same beer, this one just two weeks old. This has a bigger bitter hit; it’s good but I prefer the older beer. “When I started at my first lager brewery,” says Keene “I could get away with less time, but here I don’t want to. If we got bigger I would invest in more vessels rather than compromise.”

Back to the Future

Keene’s sentiments are indicative of a small but growing band of British craft brewers who are applying themselves to producing lager with the same sense of quality as can be found in the most renowned lager breweries on the continent. Call it craft lager, real lager, micro-brewed lager, whatever, but these beers are closer in spirit, taste, commitment and quality to the likes of those produced by Primator, Herold and Löwenbräu-Buttenheim than the macro-brewed lagers that dominate the British market. This is a quiet revolution that currently only involves a handful of breweries, but these guys (and girls) are intent on changing people’s perceptions about what lager means; they’ve even set up a lobbying organisation called Lagers of the British Isles (LOBI).

Companies like Cotswold, Freedom and West are applying technology, innovation and craftsmanship to bring well-lagered pale (and dark) beer to the thinking drinking public. What is unique is that they are stand-alone lager breweries, for apart from the odd wheat beer, bottom fermentation and cold maturation over a period of at least four weeks minimum is the way to go. For the most part they are also small companies. West is a brewpub with attached restaurant based in a former 19th century factory in Glasgow. Freedom can be found in Burton-upon-Trent, having had several owners since its arrival on the London scene in the 1990s―it was originally close to the White Horse at Parsons Green and received early recognition from pub regular Michael Jackson. Keene started Cotswold in 2005 and now produces 3,000 hectolitres a year (“lager is nearly 70 percent of the beer market and when we started only a couple of micros were brewing it, so there was an obvious gap in the market!”).

Then there are the ale breweries such as Liverpool-based Cains and Scotland’s Harviestoun who brew a lager as part of their portfolio (both breweries muddy the water by producing “cask-conditioned” lagers). Over in Cornwall, the long-established family brewery St. Austell is also dipping its toes into the craft lager pool as its head brewer Roger Ryman explained about its forthcoming, but unnamed, lager: “From a purely commercial point of view, lager is an obvious gap in our portfolio, while from a brewing perspective, I want to do it just to prove that I can! We have not brewed a lager before so as a brewer it is a challenge to successfully brew and bring to market a new category of beer.”

Meanwhile, the craft lager pioneer is Meantime, based in the east London borough of Greenwich. Since its appearance in 2000, it has grown into the second largest London brewery and its beers have found favour in the U.S. This summer it will have a new specially commissioned brewery installed and it has also levered a 10-hectolitre micro into a brewpub/restaurant at the site of the old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. “Meantime started from nothing,” says the brewery’s founder and leading light Alastair Hook, “and this year we will be commissioning new kit that will enable us to produce 100,000 hectolitres of beer annually. This will be predominantly bottom-fermenting Pils lagers.”

Despite the attention and faddism of the craft community toward a dizzying array and variegation of new and old ale styles, lagers easily hold their own from both quality and curiosity standpoints with their top-fermented cousins. Lager styles are more limited in number (we have twenty-four categories in our BTI taxonomy vs. fifty-seven ales). But, they perhaps represent a more focused set of clearly delineated styles that are revered for their elegant simplicity and drinkability by beer drinkers, as well as the challenges of brewing them by brewers (lingering legacies of the Reinheitsgebot perhaps.) This respect for lagers by lager brewers is clearly commensurate with the investment in their success. Despite some crafty cries of “macrobeer” or worse, lagers, especially pale lagers and pilsners, are some of the most precisely brewed, scientifically controlled and, in a way, “perfect” beers made.

In this year’s lager tasting for the World Beer Championships, we tasted examples of fourteen lager styles from nineteen countries. As a point of comparison, in our British and North American ales tasting earlier this year, we sampled nineteen ale styles from six countries. While most of the lager brands were from mid-size to large domestic and international breweries, it was refreshing to see some craft breweries in the mix and scoring highly.

Standouts showcasing the depth and international breadth of our tasting include the return of the Czech Republic’s Primator Maibock (95), Dark Lager (93) and Pale Lager (92) to U.S. shores; “The Master” (92), a pilsner from Asahi; Poland’s Grupa Zywiec’s Tatra Malt Liquor (91); Tibet’s Lhasa Dortmunder (88); Austria’s Stiegl Columbus Original Bock (90); and Spain’s Damm Brewery’s Voll-Damm Märzen (90). A from the U.S. crafty scene: Del Norte Brewing Co.’s Mañana Mexican Style Amber Lager (93), Capital Brewery’s Autumnal Fire (93) and Pilsner (92), Sam Adams Light (90) and Winter Lager (93), Oskar Blues’ Mama’s Little Yella Pils (92), and even some interesting private label contract brews like Cable Car Lager (90). All in all, a world of lager choices and a stage set for enjoyment. Cheers!

In the process, the large brewers began dumbing down all of their own beer types. Beer color was as pale yellow as the brewers could make it. The hop levels fell to barely detectable amounts, close to the human taste threshold. By 1978, the world’s largest brewers had just about totally ruined the great beer styles of the world.

Cold-fermented and aged, lager beers had become the world’s major brewing style since their introduction in the mid-19th century. The cold-brewing method made lager beer smoother, more mellow and less bitter than the old ale beer types, which were warm-fermented quickly with top-fermenting yeast (above 60 degrees F/15.5 degrees C).

The faster ale ferment produced beer with heavier and more intense taste factors. The British and Belgian brewers were masters of the old traditional ale beers. In this period, only a very few American brewers pursued the ale tradition.

Prohibition also had the effect of destroying the good name of homebrew. My stepfather’s homebrew was a classic example of that miserable breed. His recipe: one 3.5-pound can of Blue Ribbon Hop Flavored Malt Syrup, ten gallons of water, ten pounds of corn sugar and a cube of Fleishman’s yeast. His lone fermenting vessel was a beautiful 10-gallon porcelain crock that stood behind my mother’s kitchen stove. At the end of ferment (about a week signaled by a low-key bubble formation on the surface of the beer), he bottled it in reusable dark quart bottles. A secondary ferment in the bottle, initiated by the addition of a level teaspoon of corn sugar, served to carbonate the finished beer after another week or so.

Unless you really needed an alcohol fix, this beer was truly wretched. It cost my dad a penny per quart, and he continued brewing the stuff until I was in college after the end of the war. By then, he was investing two cents a quart, but it satisfied the alcohol needs of my friends and me. We were after the cheap alcohol effect, and you couldn’t beat the price (free to us) nor the alcohol content (about 6 percent)—especially so since I didn’t reach legal drinking age until 1947, after service in the Marines, where I enjoyed American “3.2” beer (4 percent ABV) on military bases during the war. What I learned from all this was that drinking homebrew was only for the desperate among us.

Say ‘Hello” to Good Beer

When I was recalled for the Korean War, I sampled my first really good beer in Japan (Danish Tuborg). I was amazed at how good that tasted. I’d had no idea that beer had such potential. I became acquainted with delicious imported ales and American-brewed Rainier Ale, a strange concoction that turned out to be a bastard ale, i.e., brewed warm with bottom-fermenting (cold-fermenting) lager yeast. At least these beers had taste, while the mainstream mega-brewers were busy removing all vestiges of flavor from their ever more miserable products.

In 1967, I traveled down to San Francisco, the city of my birth. There, in the company of a friend, I chanced to visit the Old Spaghetti Factory on Green Street. They served San Francisco Steam Beer from the Anchor Brewing Co. Now that was a beer to note! My friend commented that Anchor Steam reminded him of homebrew. I had to wonder where he might have sampled any homebrew of such distinctive quality. But the idea stuck with me, and I began to wonder if one really could brew a beer like that at home.

I soon gave up on beer, and concentrated on exploring the good wines that this country produces. I started to make my own, with the help of Wine-Art, the local Portland home-winemaking shop. My wines were good, and Jack McCallum, the owner, suggested that I should teach a winemaking class for the local community college in 1968. It was great fun, and I discovered that the shop also had a great homebrewing section, with a Canadian recipe for a European-style lager beer, which was fermented warm in the manner of most homebrewers. It was quite different from that made by my stepfather.

This one was based on using only malt extract syrup and/or dry malt extract, with no sugar to ruin the taste. Moreover, the production system called for a brewery-style large kettle boil-up of the wort, during which one added real dried hops, and then transferred the cooled hot wort to an open primary ferment. This, along with a closed secondary ferment (a major feature in winemaking), under a fermentation lock in a winemaker’s glass carboy, made me say, “Wow!” There was a big difference in taste. This beer was like no other beer brewed in anyone’s home that I’d ever tried. It tasted pretty much like one would expect good beer to taste. I incorporated this recipe into my winemaking classes, even though homebrewed beer was still illegal.

Wine-Art owner Jack McCallum was so impressed with my re-write of his very good homebrew recipe that he invited me to write a book on the subject. In 1969, I did just that. A Treatise on Lager Beer came out in 1970 as a small, 52-page, booklet. We sold 110,000 copies of the book’s seven editions or revisions.

At that time, there were only 73 U.S. brewing companies operating 133 brewing plants in 31 states. Industry predictions told us there’d only be 10 by 1990. One could speculate that they’d all be brewing Budweiser clones by then.

But as the techniques of modern, scientifically-based homebrewing appeared, curiosity about small brewing began to rise. Fritz Maytag’s San Francisco Steam Beer techniques also began to draw interest. This culminated in the first American microbrewery the New Albion Brewery in Sonoma, CA, opened in 1976 by Jack McAuliffe.

Enter Michael Jackson and Charlie Papazian

Meanwhile, in England, Michael Jackson appeared with his monumental, soul-satisfying World Guide to Beer in 1977. I had suspected that there was a great variety of good beer out there, but I had no idea of the magnitude. Most of the beers found in the United were sold by the country! Who knew there were also styles?

Ale and lager, light and dark? What other kinds of beer could there be? Charles Finkel soon showed us, when his importing company, Merchant du Vin, brought in some of Jackson’s recommendations, including the great Belgian Orval Trappist and Lindemans Kriek, as well as British Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale and Pinkus Ur-Pils from then-West Germany. Good beer had returned to America.

In Boulder, CO, in 1978, Charlie Papazian formed the American Homebrewers Association, our country’s first national homebrew organization. In December of that year, he introduced their journal, Zymurgy. He had been teaching and encouraging modern homebrewing in that city for several years by then, and he published his first book The Joy of Brewing (1976), whose sequel, The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing (1991), is still the definitive text on that art. The end of 1978 also signaled the legalizing of homebrewing along the same lines as homemade wine had always been, even through Prohibition.

The Return of the Ales

The year 1980 was a banner year, as homebrewers and other interested folks began opening small micro-breweries, including Sierra Nevada in Chico, CA by homebrewer and homebrew shop owner Ken Grossman, and Boulder Brewing in Longmont, CO.

These events brought Papazian and myself together with Michael Jackson at the first Great American Beer Festival in 1982, which included beer from some 40 breweries. Although not very impressive, what it did signal was that one could open a small brewery and enjoy modest success.

From 1981 to 1987, some 80 new microbrewers opened their doors in this country and Canada, due to the efforts of mostly new homebrewer entrepreneurs. By 2002 there were 1,503 breweries operating in this country! Not all have survived, of course, but some 1,449 were in operation by the end of 2007. Microbreweries have spread across the world, producing a wide variety of Jackson’s styles, showing up in such strange and disparate places as Japan, Korea, Europe and even Africa and southern Asia. Most of these new brewers produce ale beer on draft, which can take as little as seven to 10 days from brew kettle to beer tap. None of this would have happened without the work of Charlie Papazian and his brainchild, the American Homebrewers Association, which helped build a home for all these new brewers.

Plenty of new styles of ale have been showing up on the scene recently. Barrel aged ales, wildly fermented ales and a myriad of hop-bombs to entice the beer hunters out there. Experimental styles seem to generating a lot of intrigue, but for flavor and balance, be sure to stop by and give your old friends, the lagers, a visit once in a while.

Here are a few to revisit or try the next time you’re in the mood for a crisp, clean quaff. As far as pale lagers go, treat yourself to the Imperial Lager (91 points) from Lion Brewery Ceylon in Sri Lanka. An incredible lager to spend some time enjoying, considering its ABV weighs in at 8.8 percent. To amp it up a bit, invite some of your favorite curry dishes to the party. If the occasion is game day, and you need a great session brew to pair nicely with some homemade chili, try the lager from River Horse Brewery Lager in New Jersey (87 points).

Many brands these days are calling themselves pilsners. It is, after all, the most widely replicated style. Buyer beware: many in reality are watered down versions of the classic. Here are a few that will give a taste of true pilsner perfection. Zatec Bright Lager (90 points) from the Czech Republic, the home of pilsner, is highly drinkable and well balanced. Germany’s Paulaner Brauerei (88 points) brews another fine example of the style. Even Scotland has shown us an interesting take from the Atlas Brewery: Latitude Highland Pilsner (90 points) is soft on the palate and highly thirst quenching. Try any of these brews with some encased meats and hard cheeses at your next session with friends.

When fall rolls around, many breweries offer fine examples of malty Oktoberfest beers to grace the autumnal celebrations. From Germany, try Hofbrähaus München Oktoberfest (92 points) or Hacker-Pschorr Original Oktoberfest (90 points) as benchmarks for the style. Upland Brewing’s Oktoberfest Bavarian-Style Lager (84 points) from Indiana is a great example of the influence the classics have had on an American brewer: a big, roasty malt bomb with some warming qualities as well. Wash down some roasted chicken or pork with some spätzle on the side with any of these fest beers.

Dark lagers, or dunkels are personal favorite. Hirter Morchl from Austria (96 points), with its perfect balance, is a must-try for any fan of the style. Hofbrähaus München Dunkel (93 points) is also welcome to the session. If you are in the mood to seek out a domestic example, definitely keep your eyes open for Bastone Brewery’s Munich Dunkel Lager from Michigan (90 points): you will be rewarded with excellence. Try a dunkel with a liverwurst sandwich if you’re feeling adventurous.

Lastly, explore the doppelbocks, the dark and mischievous side of the lager coin. Salvator Doppelbock from Paulaner (93 points) was my introduction to the style many years ago and still a personal favorite. For a fun combo, pairing try it first with some braised pork-belly and then, for dessert, some crème brûlée: you’ll experience just how dynamic and complex this beer style really is.

A handful of classics and a few interpretations of the various styles rounded out this last World Beer Championships. Many thanks to the brewers and judges who participated in such an extraordinary event. Cheers!

Plenty of new styles of ale have been showing up on the scene recently. Barrel aged ales, wildly fermented ales and a myriad of hop-bombs to entice the beer hunters out there. Experimental styles seem to generating a lot of intrigue, but for flavor and balance, be sure to stop by and give your old friends, the lagers, a visit once in a while.

Here are a few to revisit or try the next time you’re in the mood for a crisp, clean quaff. As far as pale lagers go, treat yourself to the Imperial Lager (91 points) from Lion Brewery Ceylon in Sri Lanka. An incredible lager to spend some time enjoying, considering its ABV weighs in at 8.8 percent. To amp it up a bit, invite some of your favorite curry dishes to the party. If the occasion is game day, and you need a great session brew to pair nicely with some homemade chili, try the lager from River Horse Brewery Lager in New Jersey (87 points).

Many brands these days are calling themselves pilsners. It is, after all, the most widely replicated style. Buyer beware: many in reality are watered down versions of the classic. Here are a few that will give a taste of true pilsner perfection. Zatec Bright Lager (90 points) from the Czech Republic, the home of pilsner, is highly drinkable and well balanced. Germany’s Paulaner Brauerei (88 points) brews another fine example of the style. Even Scotland has shown us an interesting take from the Atlas Brewery: Latitude Highland Pilsner (90 points) is soft on the palate and highly thirst quenching. Try any of these brews with some encased meats and hard cheeses at your next session with friends.

When fall rolls around, many breweries offer fine examples of malty Oktoberfest beers to grace the autumnal celebrations. From Germany, try Hofbrähaus München Oktoberfest (92 points) or Hacker-Pschorr Original Oktoberfest (90 points) as benchmarks for the style. Upland Brewing’s Oktoberfest Bavarian-Style Lager (84 points) from Indiana is a great example of the influence the classics have had on an American brewer: a big, roasty malt bomb with some warming qualities as well. Wash down some roasted chicken or pork with some spätzle on the side with any of these fest beers.

Dark lagers, or dunkels are personal favorite. Hirter Morchl from Austria (96 points), with its perfect balance, is a must-try for any fan of the style. Hofbrähaus München Dunkel (93 points) is also welcome to the session. If you are in the mood to seek out a domestic example, definitely keep your eyes open for Bastone Brewery’s Munich Dunkel Lager from Michigan (90 points): you will be rewarded with excellence. Try a dunkel with a liverwurst sandwich if you’re feeling adventurous.

Lastly, explore the doppelbocks, the dark and mischievous side of the lager coin. Salvator Doppelbock from Paulaner (93 points) was my introduction to the style many years ago and still a personal favorite. For a fun combo, pairing try it first with some braised pork-belly and then, for dessert, some crème brûlée: you’ll experience just how dynamic and complex this beer style really is.

A handful of classics and a few interpretations of the various styles rounded out this last World Beer Championships. Many thanks to the brewers and judges who participated in such an extraordinary event. Cheers!

But there’s much more to tell. First of all, ale and lager are both beers; that is, they are fermented from grain. The major difference between these two beer families stems from the temperature at which fermentation is carried out. And the importance of these differences in temperature is that chemical reactions happen more slowly at lower temperatures.

The science of chemical change tells us that for each increase of 18 degrees Fahrenheit/10 degrees Celsius, the speed of chemical change is doubled; a similar decrease, and the speed of change is halved. But when the temperature goes above 104 degrees F/40 degrees C, or falls below 58 degrees F/15 degrees C, most yeast will be in trouble.

Brewers generally want their beer to attenuate (convert sugar to alcohol) slowly in the ferment, thus changes will take place over a longer period of time. Hence, they tend to keep fermentation temperatures as low as possible, particularly in the aging process after attenuation is, for the most part, complete.

S. cerevisiae is the most common yeast out there. Variants of this yeast are used in bread making, winemaking and other common formulations. We think of it as the original beer yeast, used in the production of all original beer styles dating back to early Babylonian times—the original or natural yeast used in ale beer production. It is the universal yeast, appearing world wide, even into the Antarctic.

We call it “top fermenting” or “ale” yeast: it ferments throughout the body of the beer wort, rising first to the surface (where it can be harvested). In time, it will sink to the bottom of the fermentation vessel, remaining after the finished beer is removed. This yeast also has greater tolerance to alcohol, hence it is capable of producing stronger (higher alcohol content) beers.

Saccharomyces uvarum—so called “bottom fermenting” or “lager” yeast—is more fragile. It ferments throughout the body of the beer wort and settles to the bottom of the vessel at the end of that process. The wonder of bottom fermenting yeast is that, in addition to being very fragile, it attenuates more slowly and to a lesser extent than ale yeast. Not only that, but it has lower alcohol tolerance and almost no ability to sporulate (form cysts of one to three cells that are surrounded by a protective wall as protection against cold). Without this protection, it will continue to work at fairly cool temperatures, even below 39 degrees F/3 degrees C. It has the additional ability to ferment the sugar melibose, an ability missing in the top fermenting “ale” yeast.

These traits might appear to be a disadvantage for this yeast strain, and in some ways they are. But the effect is to leave a greater remnant of sugar in beer. Combined with the very slow attenuation, this results in better clarification, a more full-bodied beer with far fewer esters and a better and more mellow palate. The final result of all that is the wonder of so-called “lager” beer (from the German lagern: to store), a beer that is crisper in character and less fruity in aroma than ale. If the only beer you had ever tasted were heavy and hoppy ale beer, lager would indeed be a revelation to you.

Better Yet is the Story!

It all began in the Middle Ages when Bavarian brewers discovered that their beer continued to ferment while being stored in cold ice-caves during the winter. The result was a greatly improved, very smooth, mellow tasting brew. They would brew in late fall and store the beer, covered with ice harvested from nearby lakes and rivers, until early spring. They called it lager beer because of the long storage period. This beer, fermented at some 40 degrees F/4 degrees C had worked only half as fast as similarly brewed ale beer brewed at 58 degrees F/14 degrees C.

In the second half of the 19th century, scientists (Pasteur and others) began to study this beer’s obviously different yeast with great interest. By that time, the most renowned version of the beer had come to be called “pilsner,” after the Bohemian (now Czech) city of Pilzn. The original yeast had been brought to Bohemia from Bavaria by traveling monks. Quality glassware had come into production, and improved malting techniques made very pale beer feasible. This new beer was clearer, more beautiful and mellower, thanks to those improved malting techniques and lowered hop rates. The cold ferment prevented souring, allowing reduction of the high hop levels that were required for safe ale ferments. This was especially so once the introduction of refrigeration permitted year-round production.

It was a whole new ball game: beautiful beer from cultured yeasts, along with mellow taste and lower alcohol content led to the introduction of pilsner-style beer across the planet. It was the brewing phenomenon of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Lager brewers soon cornered the major beer markets in much of the world, with the major exception of Great Britain and Belgium, where the brewers continued to cling to their beloved ales.

Lager Domination

Central Europe, and to some extent the United States, came to dominate world beer production with this fascinating new beer type. Large American brewers of this era began to buy up their smaller neighbors. Nevertheless, by 1860 there were 1,269 breweries in this country, with a total population of 31 million people. Although expansion and consolidation continued, there were a little over 1,900 breweries by the end of that century. Prohibition loomed and numbers fell precipitately, so that fewer than 1,000 remained by the time Prohibition was enacted in 1919.

After Prohibition was repealed at the end of 1933, some 756 brewers eventually returned to production in the next few years. However, consolidation once again became the major activity of American brewers. Only 605 remained in 1939. World War II also took its toll and by 1962 only 220 brewers remained operational.

That wasn’t the worst result of the war. The brewers were forced to lower the alcohol content of much of their production. During the war, the Republicans wanted to return to return the country to Prohibition, but British Prime Minister Churchill urged President Roosevelt not only to allow continued beer production, but to make sure that our armed forces in this country, and in the field across the world, were provided with a reasonable ration of beer.

Actually, when I was serving on Okinawa near the end of the war, we were provided with a weekly ration of six beers, so called “3.2 beer” ABW, which translates to 4% ABV. (I remember that when the Japanese surrendered, supplies became scarce, and our ration was reduced from six beers to six cans of Australian chocolate milk toddy, and a little later to six cans of tomato juice! But I digress. Another time I’ll tell you about the grand party we enlisted folk had to celebrate the war’s end. That one featured some of our purloined officer’s hard liquor, along with stolen steaks and such. Fireworks? They wanted us to return our unused ammunition. Fat chance.)

This era led to the large brewers using greater amounts of cheaper non-malt adjuncts. Eventually it led to the ever lighter and paler beer. By 1962 only 220 brewers remained, down to 55 in 1974, with 10 predicted to remain by 1990. Worse, the beer was becoming totally tasteless.

Then came lite beer, dry beer and ice beer. The lager beer revolution had reached its ultimate end-point. Enough! What the country needed at that point was beer with taste and character. We needed ale beer! Ale beer was a natural result of the many new brewers joining the fray. They didn’t have the room or the refrigeration to produce lager beer; and for the most part were forced to fast ferment their beer because of space limitations.

Ale was just what we beer drinkers needed: beer with flavor and character. We had come a full circle. But rest assured, lager beer will become more popular again for the same reasons it first became dominant on the planet. Folks will tire of ale, and look for mellow lagers again. But maybe this time, the beer styles will be more abundant. Any brew that can be aled can be lagered. Two different results and twice as many satisfied customers. That should be great fun.

Michael Jackson’s great book, World Guide to Beer (1976), described about 24 beer styles from across the world, along with good information as to where and how most of them were being brewed at that time, in the world’s great beer-making countries.

Presently there are over 80 styles (with maybe a hundred variants) presented by the Great American Beer Festival people and the Beer Judge Certification Program for homebrewers. There seem to be many more probabilities on the horizon.

Obviously, the old 1516 Reinheitsgebot, with only four ingredients allowed, is no longer satisfactory. We need to go back 5000 years to the Chinese Reinheitsgebot, Di, Huo, Qi, and Shui, the four primal elements of the universe: Earth, Fire, Air and Water—earth representing everything, but especially everything that grows; fire to make it work; air, as in spirit, from the yeast; and water as a home for it all.

For the Twenty-First Century

As I see it, there are a great number of probabilities for this 21st century, and we can see them at the marketplace already. What beer should a populist brewer brew? If they want their customers to tell friends about their “great beer,” these brewers should get busy.

Fresh Hops

First, and maybe best of the lot, is the ever more popular and annual “fresh hop” or “harvest” beers being brewed by an increasing number of brewers across the country. This beer style was probably invented by Bert Grant at his Yakima, WA, brewery. He called it a “beer-jolais nouveau.” This beer type has been compared favorably with Nouveau wines, those early season delights that titillate wine enthusiasts. This year has seen near critical mass of fresh hop brews in production across America.

The New Imperials

There is also a grand tendency to brew outrageous beers in the so-called “Imperial” department: “Imperial,” as in too strong, too hoppy, too weird and too much. Or is it not enough? Can a beer really have too much alcohol, too many hops,

It is a question of style. Every day, I am asked questions about beer: by email about 25 each morning; by other journalists, radio and television hosts, and in casual conversations, another couple of dozen each week. On this morning in Prague, that question, the persistent one, is close to home: “What’s the difference between lager and pilsner?”

The questioner does not tell me where he lives, but the idiom of the preamble sounds American. If you had such a question, who would you ask? The obvious place to direct such a query would be a brewery. That course was taken a few years ago by the columnist William Safire, in the Sunday magazine of The New York Times. Some readers know Safire as a political analyst, writing from the conservative viewpoint. Others are more familiar with his column about the English language, in which he looks at contemporary usage

Safire wanted to know what “lager” meant. He called a major brewery and was told that lager was the German word for the verb “store.” His informant explained that it thus referred to barrels in a cellar. A brew tapped from barrels was therefore described as a lager beer. In short, lager meant “draft.”

That explanation began well, then ran off the rails. Beer is lagered at the brewery, not the pub. The original lagering cellars contained ceiling-high wooden tuns, not barrels. Today, the lagering vessels are most often made of stainless steel, and are even larger, often towering outside the brewery. A lager suggests a beer that has a cold maturation; the term has nothing to do with draft versus bottled or canned beer.

How did the language maven manage to publish such nonsense in a newspaper that takes itself extremely seriously? I suspect he talked to a person in public relations or marketing. Or perhaps he asked a brewer who had always worked in the United States. When I started researching the world’s beers, in the mid 1970s, I soon discovered that many brewers had no real understanding of what went on in other countries. In so far as style terms were used, there was a great deal of confusion about their meaning.